{"id":12327,"date":"2011-01-09T13:50:29","date_gmt":"2011-01-09T18:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=12327"},"modified":"2011-01-09T13:50:29","modified_gmt":"2011-01-09T18:50:29","slug":"nba-free-picks-ats-miami-heat-at-portland-trailblazers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/nba-free-picks-ats-miami-heat-at-portland-trailblazers-12327\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Free Picks ATS: Miami Heat at Portland Trailblazers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Miami Heat AT Portland Trailblazers
\nJanuary 9th, 2011 at 9:00 PM EST
\nOpening Line: Miami -5.5
\nCurrent Line: Miami -5.5
\nOpening Total: 186
\nCurrent Total: 184
\nOpening Moneyline: Miami -215 \/ Portland +185
\nCurrent Moneyline: Miami -240 \/ Portland +195<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Wade struggled badly last game against the Bucks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Miami enters tonight’s game with an 8 game win streak, second to only Orlando’s 9 game win streak.\u00a0 Portland will try to thwart that in the Rose Garden, where they are an impressive 12-3.\u00a0 Miami, in fact however, has won 13 straight on the road and they have won 20 of their last 21.<\/p>\n

The Heat won their last game against the lowly Bucks by 6 in OT.\u00a0 LeBron commented, \u201cIt takes luck sometimes. Games that you maybe shouldn\u2019t have won. You have streaks like that, you definitely need some type of luck.\u201d<\/p>\n

That night, LeBron and Wade combined to go a horrid 12 of 39 from the field.\u00a0 They’ll have to improve on that to beat Portland, a notoriously tough team at home.\u00a0 Portland has won their last two games against Minnesota and Houston, and they have won 4 of their last 5.<\/p>\n

Some betting trends:<\/p>\n

The total has gone OVER in 4 of Miami’s last 5 games and they have won all 5 of those games.\u00a0 They have won their last 13 road games but have won only 1 of the last 6 against the Blazers.\u00a0 They are 1-5 SU in their last 6 road games and the total has gone OVER in 5 of their last 7 against Portland.\u00a0 Miami has won 4 of their last 6 road games in Portland.<\/p>\n

Portland is 4-1 SU in its last 5 games and 5-0 SU in their last 5 at home.\u00a0 The total has gone OVER in 5 of their last 7 against the Heat and they are 5-1 SU in their last 6 playing the Heat.\u00a0 They are 4-11 ATS in their last 15 home games against Miami and the total has gone OVER in 5 of their last 7 home games against the Heat.<\/p>\n

Key Matchups:
\n
\nDwyane Wade vs. Wesley Matthews<\/strong><\/p>\n

For as much as you would like to think Wade is superior to\u00a0 Matthews, Matthews will give him a challenge on both ends of the court.\u00a0 Matthews scored a career high 36 points against Minnesota on Friday night in a 10 point Blazer victory.\u00a0 He is now averaging 16 points a game and is shooting 38% from behind the arc.\u00a0 Wade will not be able to rest on defense but will find himself having to stay out on Matthews and contest his shots, otherwise Matthews could be in for a big night.\u00a0 Moreover, Matthews is a very good defender and should be able to keep Wade from having a monster game.\u00a0 Wade has scored 25 or more in 5 of his last 6 games, including 40 or more in 2 of them, so Matthews will have his work cut out for him.\u00a0 But if Salmons can hold Wade to 14 points then Matthews can, too.\u00a0 This will be a much better matchup than most of you would expect from a player that only die hard basketball fans know is one of the emerging stars in the game in Matthews.<\/p>\n

Chris Bosh vs. LaMarcus Aldridge<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aldridge has really picked up the slack in Brandon Roy’s absence.\u00a0 He’s averaging a career high 20.2 points per game and has scored 25 or more in his last 5 games, and also grabbed double digit rebounds in all those games except one.\u00a0 Bosh is a good defender, but if he’s not careful Aldridge could catch fire from outside where he does most of his damage.\u00a0 Bosh has got things together after a rough start where he was still trying to find his place in the Miami offense.\u00a0 He’s scored 15 or more in 13 of his last 14 games and has had double doubles in 6 of his last 8 games.<\/p>\n

NBA Oddsmakers have set the line pretty close on this one.\u00a0 Miami is on fire on the road, as mentioned, but Portland is a very good team at home and even without Roy they still have a decent amount of fire.\u00a0 The only question is whether they can over come Miami’s suffocating defense and while doing so keep Wade and James from going wild.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Miami Heat AT Portland Trailblazers January 9th, 2011 at 9:00 PM EST Opening Line: Miami -5.5 Current Line: Miami -5.5 Opening Total: 186 Current Total: 184 Opening Moneyline: Miami -215 \/ Portland +185 Current Moneyline: Miami -240 \/ Portland +195 Miami enters tonight’s game with an 8 game win streak, second to only Orlando’s 9 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":9351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[692,2896,3303,66,707,2800],"class_list":["post-12327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-chris-bosh","tag-dwyane-wade","tag-lamarcus-aldridge","tag-lebron-james","tag-miami-heat","tag-portland-trailblazers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12327"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12329,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12327\/revisions\/12329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}